A violent argument with R—— re marriage. He says Love means appropriation, and is taking the most elaborate precautions to forfend passion—just as if it were a militant suffragette. Every woman he meets he first puts into a long quarantine, lest perchance she carries the germ of the infectious disease. He quotes Hippolytus and talks like a mediæval ascetic. Himself, I imagine, he regards as a valuable but brittle piece of Dresden china which must be saved from rough handling and left unmolested to pursue its high and dusty destiny—an old crock as I warned him. By refusing to plunge into life he will live long and be a well preserved man, but scarcely a living man—a mummy rather. I told him so amid much laughter.
"You're a reactionary," says he.
"Yes, but why should a reactionary be a naughty boy?"
June 7.
My ironical fate lured me this evening into another discussion on marriage in which I had to take up a position exactly opposite to the one I defended yesterday against R——. In fact, I actually subverted to my own pressing requirements some of R——'s own arguments! The argument, of course, was with Her.
Marriage, I urged, was an economic trap for guileless young men, and for my part (to give myself some necessary stiffening) I did not intend to enter upon any such hazardous course, even if I had the chance. Miss —— said I was a funk—to me who the day before had been hammering into R—— my principle of "Plunge and damn the consequences." I was informed I was an old woman afraid to go out without an umbrella, an old tabby cat afraid to leave the kitchen fire, etc., etc.
"Yes, I am afraid to go out without an umbrella," I argued formally, "when it's raining cats and dogs. As long as I am dry, I shall keep dry. As soon as I find myself caught in the rain or victimised by a passion, I shan't be afraid of falling in love or getting wet. It would be a misadventure, but I am not going in search of one."
All the same the discussion was very galling, for I was acting a part.
... The truth is I have philandered abominably with her. I know it. And now I am jibbing at the idea of marriage.... I am such an egotist, I want, I believe, a Princess of the Blood Royal.
June 9.